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Wednesday, November 5, 2014

SPOILERS: Batman Eternal #31

Alfred and Bane, the buddy-cop comedy you never knew you wanted, coming to ABC this fall!

The Spoilers:

Arkham is still a hole in the ground, this shouldn't come as a surprise. But now, the survivors are starting to crawl out of that whole, and conveniently/unfortunately enough, most of the people to survive are the A-list baddies including Mr. Freeze, Zsasz and Clayface, who start causing all sorts of trouble for the police that Batman has to deal with, after Joker's Daughter suicide vest turns out to be a dud.

Inside the wreckage of Arkham, Aflred is saved by Bane, who had taken notice that Alfred was a man of ex-military, thus could be useful in his escape. Alfred works along with Bane, showing his usefulness by guiding them to the sewer tunnels, which he knows well... Unfortunately, both are attacked by whatever those weird demon things are, which have yet to be explained.

Outside, while Batman is dealing with his various rogues, he asks Julia to run satellite scans for Hush, as they need to find him now. Fortunately for them, they're about to get a tip from an SoS signal sent out by Stephanie Brown after Hush corners her in an alley.

Back beneath Gotham, Bane deals with his demon guys, and Alfred uses his old SAS training to do the same, which impresses Bane. Alfred ends up leading them to what seems to be a dead end, but Alfred uses a voice command which 1. Sends some knockout gas to Bane's face and 2. opens a secret door to one of the various command posts Batman has throughout the city, allowing him to get back online to both Bruce and Julia's pleasant surprise (as well as Batwing who is all "hey guys, I'm stuck").

END.

The Review:

Last week my problem with the issue is that everything that happened was expected to happen, so there were no big moments that weren't spoiled ahead of time. This week, I'm finding that my problem is that the payoff to various events ends up being nothing in many cases. What happens with Joker's Daughter and her bomb? Nothing. What's with this whole Bane/Alfred team-up? Nothing really. And probably worse of all, given this was a lengthier plotline, what happens with Alfred being taken out of the picture after being injected with fear toxin straight to he brain? Nothing, he just walks back into a remote bat cave, after the collapse and he's back, cool. It was just a week of weak payoffs and art that I once again, didn't enjoy. Unfortunate.